“Russian Facebook” founder flees country after being forced out as CEO

Russian social network is now effectively under state control.

Pavel Durov, the founder of Vkontakte (VK)—the largest social network in Russia—said on Tuesday that he fled the country one day after being forced out of the company, claiming that he felt threatened by Kremlin officials.

In a post on his profile page on Monday, Durov explained that he was fired from his position as CEO of VK and that the so-called “Russian Facebook” is now “under the complete control” of two oligarchs close to President Vladimir Putin.

Durov explained that after seven years of relative social media freedom in Russia, his refusal to share user data with Russian law enforcement has set him at odds with the Kremlin, which has recently been trying to tighten its grip on the Internet, according to The Moscow Times.

VK’s former CEO says that despite his multiple refusals of Kremlin requests to censor his site in a similar fashion to how it filters print and TV news, the site—which boasts 143 million registered users globally, 88 million of whom are based in Russia—is now effectively under state control.

“I am out of Russia and have no plans to go back” Durov told TechCrunchon Tuesday. “Unfortunately, the country is incompatible with Internet business at the moment.”

Durov's post to the VK community on Monday suggested that the two businessmen who are taking over the company—Alisher Usmanov and Igor Sechin—are Putin's right-hand men. “Probably in the Russian context, something like this was inevitable, but I’m happy we lasted seven and a half years," Durov said. “We did a lot. And part of what’s been done can’t be turned back.”

Usmanov, who was ranked Russia’s richest man, has expanded into several technology ventures in recent years, including his site Mail.ru, which hosts the second and third largest social networks in Russia. He also recently owned a 10 percent stake in Facebook. Durov sold his remaining stake in VK to a company that Usmanov controls earlier this year.

Sechin, frequently described as one of Putin’s closest allies, is an oil tycoon who turned his company, Rosneft, into the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, according to CTV News.

On April 1, Durov appeared to voluntarily resign from his post as CEO of VK. Yet just two days later, he retracted his resignation, explaining that he "clearly saw that my resignation at this difficult time would have been a betrayal of all that we have defended in the last seven years. It would be very easy and a very destructive way,” the International Business Times reported.

Durov claims that the board fired him on Monday based on a technicality related to his resignation on April 1.